The Media & Technology Digest provides a monthly analysis of the key trends and innovations shaping the global technology landscape. Written by our senior analysts the digest includes a detailed focus on key industry hot topics, analysis of all major industry and product announcements with in-depth examinations of significant industry trends.

IHS Markit has revised its estimates for Internet connected set-top boxes (STBs) in its Connected Devices intelligence service following an in-depth review on an operator-by-operator basis. More than 500m connected pay STBs are now forecast for year-end 2022 globally.

4K and UHD are much misused words that can mean a lot of different things depending on who you ask. This ebook examines the facts and figures behind the rise of 4K and UHD and provides new data and insights on the UHD global status, shipment forecasts and media consumption.

According to the latest consumer surveys from November 2018, when choosing video services in India, three in four connected consumers feel localized content is as important as price - especially the inclusion of local Indian content and the quality of subtitling and dubbing of foreign video content.

More than a third of video subscribers claim ultra-high-definition (UHD) content is an important criterion in their choice of video services, across five markets surveyed. Among households with both pay TV and online video subscriptions, that preference rises to 50 percent.

According to the “Connected Devices and Media Consumption” survey from IHS Markit, TV content discovery is at the heart of the battle among TV and video providers to convince consumers that their user experience is both easy to use and truly personalized. Even with smart digital assistants now integrated into TVs, successful personalization will come down to the ability to really know their customers and help them find what they want to watch.

Verizon recently announced the rollout of its 5G wireless home broadband service in the US, 5G Home, with orders opening September 13th, 2018 and launch beginning October 1st in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.
The company is touting typical speeds of approximately 300 Mbps, peaking at 1 Gigabit, with no data caps. The service is priced at $50/month for existing Verizon subscribers, and $70/month for non-subscribers, and comes with three months of YouTube TV free. Subscribers also receive their choice of a free Google Chromecast Ultra or Apple TV 4K.

According to IHS Markit’s “Connected Devices and Media Consumption” survey conducted in April 2018, consumers who owned an existing Amazon device were also more likely to purchase further Amazon devices, use Amazon’s Prime Video service and engage with digital assistant Alexa. Amazon’s Fire Stick, specifically, was found to increase brand loyalty and engagement across services.

The 2018 CES tradeshow was dominated by common themes revolving around AI, such as machine learning, voice interfaces, and digital assistants. Building upon the AI-first focus of CES, Apple’s HomePod launch, and Google’s increased aggression in language support for Google Assistant just announced at Mobile World Congress 2018, competition within the market for smart speakers and related digital assistants has now truly begun escalating sharply.
IHS Markit expects annual shipments of smart speakers to grow steadily from 32 million units in 2017 to 47 million in 2018, reaching 85 million in 2021. This is only a fraction of the more than 5 billion consumer devices supporting digital assistants in use by the end of 2018, with nearly 3 billion more added by the end of 2021.

Google’s Pixel 2 smartphone launch event brought the announcement of two new smart speakers.
The first, is the $49 Google Home Mini, featuring a small, rounded, design-neutral form factor, and three color choices. The device incorporates far-field voice recognition, and inherits the same slate of Google Assistant, Chromecast Built-in, and calling capabilities as its larger Google Home stablemate.

Roku recently launched an updated 2017 product lineup, and announced a new version of its device operating system.
The most significant product announcement for the company in the lineup reshuffle is the new Streaming Stick+, a product capable of 4K at 60 fps and HDR (HDR10) at the $69 price point. The device remains a stick form factor, but has moved its wireless array outboard, now integrated inline with the stick’s power cable, in order to substantially improve wireless range.
The company also announced that the $29 Express and $39 Express+ were being updated with new processors enabling five times the performance of their predecessors, and the top-of-the-line Ultra has formally dropped from $129 to $99.
Roku’s remote controls on the Streaming Stick and Ultra models have also been updated, with the ability to directly control TV volume and power now standard.
Roku OS 8.0 was announced alongside the new hardware announcements, with direct integration of OTA / broadcast TV programming information into the program guide and content search results. Audio from OTA channels will also be available for Remote Listening either via the Roku app or models with headphone-jack equipped remotes. Roku’s Gracenote-powered content search has also been improved in the back end with better natural language recognition and contextual search capabilities.

Roku recently filed for a $100M initial public offering on September 1st, backed by 21st Century Fox, Fidelity, and Menlo Ventures as major shareholders. The company’s stock will list on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ROKU.

Content security firm Verimatrix has acquired Genius Digital’s Mirimon engineering team, technology, and associated IP. The Mirimon stack comprises a set of technologies that allow service providers to harvest data from a range of end-user devices, and from operator-managed consumer premises equipment (CPE) in particular. Verimatrix’s Verspective analytics proposition will integrate the technology.
The acquisition’s value is unknown. However, given that Genius Digital generated turnover of roughly USD 1.5m in 2015, IHS Markit believes that the deal was modest in size.

Apple announced its HomePod smart speaker at WWDC 2017, marking its entry into that market as well as its formal manifestation of the concept of an all-Siri voice-controlled smart home in the future.
With a 4-inch driver, a beamforming-capable 7-tweeter array, 6-microphone far field voice recognition array, acoustic modeling, multi-channel echo cancellation (useful for calling features undoubtedly to come), software-based distortion reduction, and automatic room adjustments thanks to its microphones, HomePod is thus far the most sophisticated audio product in the smart speaker race. HomePod is slated for December 2017 release in the US, UK, and Australia, at $349 USD.

Apple announced the AirPlay 2 wireless audio standard at its WWDC 2017 event. The successor to its original AirPlay Wi-Fi based audio standard, AirPlay 2 now enables multi-room audio playback, versus the single source and destination nature of the original.
AirPlay 2 is incorporated into iOS 11, and is compatible with HomeKit, to allow AirPlay 2-compatible speakers to be a controllable device within a HomeKit smart home scenario. AirPlay 2 also enables the use of Siri to initiate and control playback to compatible speakers and devices (such as Apple TV). The also-announced AirPlay 2 API allows third party apps to play to AirPlay 2 devices.